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This article is about building a pfSense virtual machine on vSphere / ESXi. Article explains how to install any major pfSense version on VMware vSphere versions 5.x and 6.x. Article does not cover how to install vSphere or how to configure pfSense to do any of the many amazing things it can. A basic, working, pfSense virtual machine will exist by the end of this document.

Disclaimer/flame-retardant: If pfSense will be running as a perimeter firewall for an organization and the “attack surface” should be minimized, many will say it is preferable to run it unvirtualized on stand-alone hardware. That is a decision for the user and/or organization to make, however. Now back to the topic.

We're going to start at the point where we have a vanilla ESXi install and have connected to it using the vSphere client. If other VMs are already running on ESXi, then it is not likely necessary to follow the networking steps too closely. However, we recommend skimming through it to see what is suggested before building the pfSense virtual machine part.

Please report any errors or typos you may find.

Assumptions

• vSphere host is up and running
• The reader has an understanding of network addressing
• You have already uploaded pfSense installation .iso to the datastore.

Installing pfSense on vSphere 6.x using vSphere web client

The following steps include the necessary vSphere web client configuration required to get pfSense VM running. After getting to the pfSense setup step, switch to the guide for vSphere client bellow.

Basic vSphere web client networking setup

Before creating a new VM in vSphere web client, you will need to create two virtual switches and two port groups. We will first create Virtual switches for WAN and LAN and after that two port groups for the WAN and LAN.

From the vSphere web client navigator, click on Networking and then click on Virtual switches tab. From there, click on “Add a new standard virtual switch”.